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<div class="Section1"> 
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    <p>&nbsp;</p>
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          <p></p>
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        <td valign="top" width="82%"> 
          <h1><font style="font-size: 3em;" color="#000099">World of Ends</font></h1>
          <h1><font style="font-size: 2em;" color="#6666ff">What the Internet Is and<br>
            How to Stop Mistaking It<br>
            for Something Else.</font></h1>
          <h1><font style="font-size: 1em;" color="#0000cc">by</font><font style="font-size: 1.5em;" color="#0000cc"> 
            <br>
            Doc Searls and <br>
            David Weinberger</font></h1>
          <p><font style="font-size: 0.8em;" color="#666666">Last update: 3.10.03 (More typos fixed 1.29.08)</font></p>
          <p>There are mistakes and there are mistakes.</p>
          <p>Some mistakes we learn from. For example: Thinking that selling toys 
            for pets on the Web is a great way to get rich. We're not going to 
            do that again.</p>
          <p>Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking 
            that:</p>
          <ul>
            <li>...the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while 
              advertisers spray them with messages. </li>
            <li>...the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should 
              filter, control and otherwise "improve." </li>
            <li>... it's a bad thing for users to communicate between different 
              kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net. </li>
            <li>...the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries 
              that feel threatened by it. </li>
          </ul>
          <p>When it comes to the Net, a lot of us&nbsp;suffer from <u>Repetitive 
            Mistake Syndrome</u>. This is especially true for magazine and newspaper 
            publishing, broadcasting, cable television, the record industry, the 
            movie industry, and the telephone industry, to name just six.</p>
          <p>Thanks to the enormous influence of those industries in Washington, 
            Repetitive Mistake Syndrome also afflicts lawmakers, regulators and 
            even the courts. Last year Internet radio, a promising new industry 
            that threatened to give listeners choices far exceeding anything on 
            the increasingly variety-less (and technologically stone-age) AM 
            and FM bands, was shot in its cradle. Guns, ammo and the occasional 
            "Yee-Haw!" were provided by the recording industry and the 
            Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which embodies all the fears felt 
            by Hollywood's alpha dinosaurs when they lobbied the Act through Congress 
            in 1998.</p>
          <p>"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around 
            it," <a href="http://www.toad.com/gnu/">John Gilmore</a> famously 
            said. And it's true. In the long run, Internet radio will succeed. 
            Instant messaging systems will interoperate. Dumb companies will get 
            smart or die. Stupid laws will be killed or replaced. But then, as 
            John Maynard Keynes also famously said, "In the long run, we're 
            all dead."</p>
          <p>All we need to do is pay attention to <i>what the Internet really 
            is</i>. It's not hard. The Net isn't rocket science. It isn't even 
            6th grade science fair, when you get right down to it. We can end 
            the tragedy of Repetitive Mistake Syndrome in our lifetimes — and 
            save a few trillion dollars' worth of dumb decisions — if we can just 
            remember one simple fact: the Net is a <i>world of ends</i>. You're 
            at one end, and everybody and everything else are at the other ends.</p>
          <p>Sure, that's a feel-good statement about everyone having value on 
            the Net, etc. But it's also the basic rock-solid fact about the Net's 
            technical architecture. And <i>the Internet's value is founded in 
            its technical architecture</i>. </p>
          <p>Fortunately, the true nature of  the Internet isn't hard to understand. 
            In fact, just a fistful of statements stands between Repetitive Mistake 
            Syndrome and Enlightenment...</p>
          </td>
        <td valign="top" width="18%"><p align="center"><font color="#000000">Choose 
            a style </font><br>
			<a href="javascript:changeStyle(3)"><b>Default</b></a> 
            <br>
            <u><font style="font-size: 1.2em;" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><a href="javascript:changeStyle(1)">1.5x 
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            <u><font style="font-size: 2em;" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><a href="javascript:changeStyle(2)">2x 
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<p><font color="#ffffff"><strong>Translations</strong></font></p>
                      </td>
                  </tr>
                  <tr>
                    <td bgcolor="#66cccc"><p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.elanceur.org/Traductions/LeMondeDesBouts/MondedesBouts.html">French</a><br>
                        <a href="http://wiki.marcokalz.de/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1">German</a><br>
                        <a href="http://www.info.org.il/woe/">Hebrew</a> <br>
                        <a href="http://paolo.evectors.it/italian/worldOfEnds.html">Italian</a><br>
                        <a href="http://gaemon.dyndns.org/wp/?p=1259">Korean</a></font><font style="font-size: 100%;"><br>
                        <a href="http://www.brockerhoff.net/bb/viewtopic.php?t=10">Portuguese</a></font>
                        <br><a href="http://www.smaldone.com.ar/documentos/docs/mundodeextremos.html">Spanish</a> [<a href="http://www.smaldone.com.ar/documentos/docs/mundodeextremos.pdf" class="style1">pdf</a>]
                        <br></p></td>
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                </tbody></table>
                <p>&nbsp;</p>
                <table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
                  <tbody><tr> 
                    <td bgcolor="#0066ff"> <p><font color="white"><strong>Links</strong></font></p></td>
                  </tr>
                  <tr> 
                    <td bgcolor="#66cccc" valign="top"> <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.reed.com/Papers/EndtoEnd.html" target="_blank">End-to-End 
                        Arguments in System Design</a> (Clark, Reed, Saltzer)</font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.isen.com/stupid.html" target="_blank">Rise 
                        of the Stupid Network</a> (Isenberg)</font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.cybertelecom.org/internet.htm" target="_blank">The Internet</a> (Washington 
                        Internet Project) </font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2003/0120bradner.html">10 
                        Right Choices</a> (Bradner)</font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.cluetrain.com/" target="_blank">The 
                        Cluetrain Manifesto</a> (Levine, Locke, Searls, Weinberger)</font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.tnr.com/061900/lessig061900.html">End 
                        Game</a> (Lessig)</font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/works/lessig/cable/fcc/fcc.html" target="_blank">Open Access to the FCC</a>, (Lessig &amp; Lemley)</font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.eff.org/" target="_blank">Electronic 
                        Frontier Foundation</a></font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.centerforthepublicdomain.org/" target="_blank">Center 
                        for the Public Domain</a></font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/framing_openspectrum.html">Why 
                        Open Spectrum Matters</a> (Weinberger)</font></p>
                      <p><font style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/OpenSpectrumFAQ.html" target="_blank">Open Spectrum FAQ</a></font></p></td>
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          </tbody></table>
          <p>&nbsp;</p>
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                    <td bgcolor="#0066ff"> <p><font color="#ffffff"><strong>About 
                        the Authors</strong></font></p></td>
                  </tr>
                  <tr> 
                    <td bgcolor="#66cccc"> <p>Doc Searls [<a href="http://www.searls.com/">link</a>] 
                        [<a href="mailto:doc@searls.com">mail</a>]</p>
                      <p>David Weinberger [<a href="http://www.evident.com/">link</a>] 
                        [<a href="mailto:self@evident.com">mail</a>]</p>
                      <p>Send a message to <a href="mailto:self@evident.com;doc@searls.com">both</a></p></td>
                  </tr>
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            <tbody><tr> 
              <td bgcolor="#0066ff"> 
                <p><a href="http://www.quicktopic.com/19/D/gvZLPUTT8g93c.html"><font color="yellow"><strong>Discuss</strong></font></a> 
                  <strong><font color="white"> this article</font></strong></p>    </td></tr></tbody></table>
			
			</td>
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        <td colspan="2" valign="top">
<table border="0" cellpadding="5" width="100%">
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              <td bgcolor="#000066"> <p><font color="#ffffff"><strong>The Nutshell</strong></font></p></td>
            </tr>
            <tr> 
              <td bgcolor="#66cccc"><p><a href="#bm1"><font size="0">1.</font></a>
                  The Internet isn't complicated<br>
                  <a href="#BM2">2.</a> The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.<br>
                  <a href="#BM3">3.</a> The Internet is stupid.<br>
                  <a href="#BM4">4.</a> Adding value to the Internet lowers its 
                  value.<br>
                  <a href="#BM5">5.</a> All the Internet's value grows on its 
                  edges.<br>
                  <a href="#BM6">6.</a> Money moves to the suburbs.<br>
                  <a href="#BM7">7.</a> The end of the world? Nah, the world of 
                  ends.<br>
                  <a href="#BM_8">8.</a> The Internet's three virtues:<br>
                &nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="#BM8a">a</a>. No one owns it<br>
                &nbsp;  &nbsp;<a href="#BM8b">b.</a> Everyone can use it<br>
                &nbsp; &nbsp;<a href="#BM8c">c</a>. Anyone can improve it<br>
                  <a href="#BM9">9.</a> If the Internet is so simple, why have 
                  so many been so boneheaded about it?<br>
                  <a href="#BM10">10.</a> Some mistakes we can stop making already</p></td>
            </tr>
          </tbody></table>
          
        </td>
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    </tbody></table>
  </div>
  
    
	
  <p>&nbsp;</p>
	
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr> 
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"> 
        <h1><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM1"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">1.</font> </font>
        The Internet isn't complicated. </h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"><blockquote>
          <p><font color="#000000">The idea behind the Internet in the first place 
            was to harness the awesome power of simplicity —&nbsp;as simple as 
            gravity in the real world. Except instead of holding little rocks 
            tight against the big round rock, the Internet was designed to hold 
            smaller networks together, turning them into one big network.</font></p>
          <p><font color="#000000">The way to do that is to make it easy easy 
            easy for the networks to send and receive data to and from one another. Thus, 
            the Internet was designed to be the simplest conceivable way to get 
            bits from any A to any B. </font></p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  
<div align="center"> 
  <p>&nbsp; </p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top">
<h1><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM2"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">2.</font> 
          </font>The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote>
          <p>When we look at utility poles, we see networks as wires. And we see 
            those wires as parts of systems: The phone system, the electric power 
            system, the cable TV system.</p>
          <p>When we listen to radio or watch TV, we're told during every break 
            that networks are sources of programming being beamed through the 
            air or through cables.</p>
          <p>But the Internet is different. It isn't wiring. It isn't a system. 
            And it isn't a source of programming.</p>
          <p>The Internet is a way for all the things that call themselves networks 
            to coexist and work together. It's an <u>inter-net</u>work. Literally.</p>
          <p>What makes the Net <i>inter</i> is the fact that it's just a protocol 
            — the Internet Protocol, to be exact.� A protocol is an agreement 
            about how things work together.</p>
          <p>This protocol doesn't specify what people can do with the network, 
            what they can build on its edges, what they can say, who gets to talk. 
            The protocol simply says: If you want to swap bits with others, here's 
            how. If you want to put a computer — or a cell phone or a refrigerator 
            — on the network, you have to agree to the agreement that is the Internet.</p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr> 
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM3"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">3.</font> 
          </font>The Internet is stupid.</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote> 
          <p>The telephone system, which is not the Internet (at least not yet), 
            is damn smart. It knows who's calling whom, where they're located, 
            whether it's a voice or data call, how far the call reaches, how much 
            the call costs, etc. And it provides services that only a phone network 
            cares about: call waiting, caller ID, *69 and lots of other stuff 
            that phone companies like to sell.</p>
          <p>The Internet, on the other hand, is stupid.<a href="#FN1"><sup>1</sup></a> 
            <a name="FNB1"></a>On purpose. Its designers made sure the biggest, 
            most inclusive network of them all was dumb as a box of rocks.</p>
          <p>The Internet doesn't know lots of things a smart network like the 
            phone system knows: Identities, permissions, priorities, etc. The 
            Internet only knows one thing: this bunch of bits needs to move from 
            one end of the Net to another. </p>
          <p>There are technical reasons why stupidity is a good design. Stupid 
            is sturdy. If a router fails, packets route around it, meaning that 
            the Net stays up. Thanks to its stupidity, the Net welcomes new devices 
            and people, so it grows quickly and in all directions. It's also easy 
            for architects to incorporate Net access into all kinds of smart devices 
            — camcorders, telephones, sprinkler systems —&nbsp;that live at the 
            Net's ends.</p>
          <p>That's because the most important reason Stupid is Good has less 
            to do with technology and everything to do with value...</p>
          </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM4"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">4.</font> 
          </font>Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote>
          <p>Sounds screwy, but it's true. If you optimize a network for one type 
            of application, you de-optimize it for others. For example, if you 
            let the network give priority to voice or video data on the grounds 
            that they need to arrive faster, you are telling other applications 
            that they will have to wait. And as soon as you do that, you have 
            turned the Net from something simple for everybody into something 
            complicated for just one purpose. It isn't the Internet anymore.</p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM5"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">5.</font></font> 
          All the Internet's value grows on its edges.</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote>
          <p>If the Internet were a smart network, its designers would have anticipated 
            the importance of a good search engine and would have built searching 
            into the network itself. But because its designers were smart, they 
            made the Net too stupid for that. So searching is a service that can 
            be built at one of the million ends of the Internet. Because people 
            can offer any services they want from their end, search engines have 
            competed, which means choice for users and astounding innovation.</p>
          <p>Search engines are just an example. Because all the Internet does 
            is throw bits from one end to another, innovators can build whatever 
            they can imagine, counting on the Internet to move data for them. 
            You don't have to get permission from the Internet's owner or systems 
            administrator or the Vice President of Service Prioritization. You 
            have an idea? Do it. And every time you do, the value of the Internet 
            goes up.</p>
          <p>The Internet has created a <em>free market for innovation. </em>That's 
            the key to the Internet's value. By the same token...</p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM6"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">6.</font> 
          </font>Money moves to the suburbs.</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote>
          <p>If all of the Internet's value is at its edges, Internet connectivity 
            itself wants to become a commodity. It should be allowed to do so.</p>
          <p>There's good business in providing commodities, but every attempt 
            to add value to the Internet itself must be resisted. To be specific: 
            Those who provide Internet connectivity inevitably will want to provide 
            content and services also because the connectivity itself will be 
            too low-priced. By keeping the two functions separate, we will enable 
            the market to set prices that will maximize access and to maximize 
            content/service innovation.<sup><a href="#FN2">2</a></sup><a name="FNB2"></a> 
          </p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM7"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">7.</font> 
          </font>The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote> 
          <p>When Craig Burton describes the Net's stupid architecture as a hollow 
            sphere comprised entirely of ends<sup><a href="#FN3">3</a></sup><a name="BFN3"></a>, 
            he's painting a picture that gets at what's most remarkable about 
            the Internet's architecture: Take the value out of the center and 
            you enable an insane flowering of value among the connected end points. 
            Because, of course, when every end is connected, each to each and 
            each to all, the ends aren't endpoints at all. </p>
          <p>And what do we ends do? Anything that can be done by anyone who wants 
            to move bits around.</p>
          <p>Notice the pride in our voice when we say "anything" and "anyone"? 
            That comes directly from the Internet's simple, stupid technical architecture. 
          </p>
          <p>Because the Internet is an agreement, it doesn't belong to any one 
            person or group. Not the incumbent companies that provide the backbone. 
            Not the ISPs that provide our connections. Not the hosting companies 
            that rent us servers. Not the industry associations that believe their 
            existence is threatened by what the rest of us do on the Net. Not 
            any government, no matter how sincerely it believes that it's just 
            trying to keep its people secure and complacent.</p>
          <p>To connect to the Internet is to agree to grow value on its edges. 
            And then something really interesting happens. We are all connected 
            equally. Distance doesn't matter. The obstacles fall away and for 
            the first time the human need to connect can be realized without artificial 
            barriers.</p>
          <p>The Internet gives us the means to become a world of ends for the 
            first time.</p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM_8"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">8.</font> 
          </font>The Internet's three virtues</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td bordercolor="#FFFFFF" valign="top"> <blockquote> 
        <p>So, those are the facts about the Internet. See, we told you they 
            were simple.</p>
          <p>But what do they mean for our behavior ... and more importantly, the 
            behavior of the mega-corps and governments that until now have acted 
            as if the Internet were theirs? </p>
          <p>Here are three basic rules of behavior that are tied directly to 
            the factual nature of the Internet:</p>
          
        <table align="center" bgcolor="#ffff00" border="1" bordercolor="#ff0000" cellpadding="5" width="50%">
          <tbody><tr>
              <td><p align="center"><strong>No one owns it.<br>
                Everyone can use it.<br>
                Anyone can improve it.</strong></p></td>
            </tr>
          </tbody></table>
          
       <p align="left">Let's look a little more closely 
            at each...</p></blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr> 
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM8a" id="BM8a"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">8.a</font> 
          </font>Nobody owns it</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote> 
          <p>It <i>can't</i> be owned, even by the companies whose "pipes" 
            it passes through, because it is an agreement, not a thing. The Internet 
            not only is in the public domain, it <i>is</i> a public domain.</p>
          <p>And that's a good thing:</p>
          <ul>
            <li>The Internet is a reliable resource. We can build businesses without 
              having to worry that Internet, Inc. is going to force us to upgrade, 
              double its price once we have bought in, or get taken over by one 
              of our competitors. </li>
            <li>We don't have to worry that some parts of it are going to work 
              with one provider and others will work with some other provider, 
              as we do with the cell phone business in the U. S. today. </li>
            <li>We don't have to worry that its basic functions are only going 
              to work with Microsoft's, Apple's or AOL's "platform" 
              — because it sits beneath all of them, outside their proprietary 
              control. </li>
            <li>Maintaining the Internet is distributed among all users, not concentrated 
              in the hands of a provider that might go out of business, and all 
              of us are a more resilient resource than any centralized group of 
              us could be. </li>
          </ul>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
</div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top&quot;"><h1><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM8b" id="BM8b"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">8.b</font></font> 
          Everyone can use it </h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top&quot;"> <blockquote>
          <p>The Internet was built to include everyone on the planet.</p>
          <p>True, only a tenth of the world — a mere 600,000,000+ people — currently 
            connects to the Internet. So "can" in the phrase "Everybody 
            can use it" is subject to the miserable inequities of fortune. 
            But, if you're lucky enough to possess sufficient material wealth 
            for a connection and a connective device, the network itself imposes 
            no obstacles to participation. You don't need a system administrator 
            to deign to let you participate. The Internet purposefully leaves 
            permissions out of the system.</p>
          <p>That's also why the Internet feels to so many of us like a natural 
            resource. We have flocked to it as if it were a part of human nature 
            just waiting to happen — just as speaking and writing now feel like 
            a part of what it means to be human.</p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM8c" id="BM8c"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">8.c</font> 
          </font>Anybody can improve it</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote>
          <p>Anyone can make the Internet a better place to live, work and raise 
            up kids. It takes a real blockhead with a will of iron to make it 
            worse.</p>
          <p>There are two ways to make it better. First, you can build a service 
            on the edge of the Net that's available to anyone who wants. Make 
            it free, make people pay for it, put out a tin cup, whatever. </p>
          <p>Second, you can do something more important: enable a whole new set 
            of end-of-Net services by coming up with a new agreement. That's how 
            email was created. And newsgroups. And even the Web. The creators 
            of these services didn't simply come up with end-based applications, 
            and they sure didn't tinker with the Internet protocol itself. Instead, 
            they came up with new protocols that use the Internet as it exists, 
            the way the agreement about how to encode images on paper enabled 
            fax machines to use telephone lines without requiring any changes 
            to the phone system itself. </p>
          <p>Remember, though, that if you come up with a new agreement, for it 
            to generate value as quickly as the Internet itself did, it needs 
            to be open, unowned, and for everyone. That's exactly why Instant 
            Messaging has failed to achieve its potential: The leading IM systems 
            of today — AOL's AIM and ICQ and Microsoft's MSN Messenger — are private 
            territories that may run <i>on</i> the Net, but they are not part 
            <i>of</i> the Net. When AOL and Microsoft decide they should run their 
            IM systems using a stupid protocol that nobody owns and everybody 
            can use, they will have improved the Net enormously. Until then, they're 
            just being stupid, and not in the good sense.</p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" valign="top"><h1 class="headerrow"><font color="#ffff00"><a name="BM9"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;">9.</font> 
          </font>If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded 
          about it?</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote>
          <p>Could it be because the three Internet virtues are the antithesis 
            of how governments and businesses view the world?</p>
          <p><em>Nobody owns it</em>: Businesses are defined by what they own, 
            as governments are defined by what they control.</p>
          <p><em>Everybody can use it</em>: In business, selling goods means transferring 
            exclusive rights of use from the vendor to the buyer; in government, 
            making laws means imposing restrictions on people.</p>
          <p><em>Anybody can improve it</em>: Business and government cherish 
            authorized roles. It's the job of only certain people to do certain 
            things, to make the right changes. </p>
          <p>Business and government by their natures are predisposed to misunderstand 
            the Internet's nature.</p>
          <p>There's another reason the Internet hasn't done a great job explaining 
            itself: The Big Money would prefer to keep telling us the Net is just 
            slow TV.</p>
          <p>The Internet has been too much like that other Walt who wrote in 
            "Song of Myself": <i>I do not trouble myself to be understood. 
            I see that the elementary laws never apologize.</i></p>
          <p>On the other hand, the Internet's elementary laws never figured people 
            would build careers on not understanding them.</p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  </div>
  <div align="center"> 
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <table class="texttable">
    <tbody><tr>
      <td class="headerrow" bgcolor="#ff9933" valign="top">
<h1 class="headerrow"><a name="BM10"></a><font style="font-size: 130%;" color="#ffff00">10.</font> 
          Some mistakes we can stop making already.</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr> 
      <td valign="top"> <blockquote>
          <p>The
companies whose value came from distributing content in ways the market
no longer wants — can you hear us Recording Industry? — can stop
thinking that bits are like really lightweight atoms. You are never
going to prevent us from copying the bits we want. Instead, why not
give us some reasons to prefer buying music from you? Hell, we might
even help you sell your stuff if you asked us to.</p>
          <p>The government types who have confused the value of the Internet 
            with the value of its contents could realize that in tinkering with 
            the Internet's core, they're actually driving down its value. In fact, 
            they maybe could see that having a system that transports all bits 
            equally, without government or industry censorship, is the single 
            most powerful force for democracy and open markets in history.</p>
          <p>The incumbent providers of networking services — Hint: It begins 
            with "tele" and ends with "com" — could accept 
            that the stupid network is going to swallow their smart network. They 
            could bite the bullet now rather than running up hundreds of billions 
            of dollars in costs delaying and fighting the inevitable.</p>
          <p>The federal agency responsible for allocating spectrum might notice 
            that the value of open spectrum is the same as the true value of the 
            Internet.</p>
          <p>Those who would censor ideas might realize that the Internet couldn't 
            tell a good bit from a bad bit if it bit it on its naughty bits. Whatever 
            censorship is going to occur will have to occur on the Net's ends — and it's not going to work very well.</p>
          <p>Perhaps companies that think they can force us to listen to their 
            messages — their banners, their interruptive graphic crawls over the 
            pages we're trying to read — will realize that our ability to flit 
            from site to site is built into the Web's architecture. They might 
            as well just put up banners that say "Hi! We don't understand 
            the Internet. Oh, and, by the way, we hate you."</p>
          <p>Enough already. Let's stop banging our heads against the facts of 
            the Internet life.</p>
          <p>We have nothing to lose but our stupidity.</p>
        </blockquote></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody></table>
  <p>&nbsp;</p></div>
  
<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="5" width="58%">
  <tbody><tr> 
    <td bgcolor="#000066"> <p><font color="#ffffff"><strong>Notes</strong></font></p></td>
  </tr>
  <tr> 
    <td bgcolor="#66cccc"><p><a href="#FNB1">1.</a><a name="FN1"></a>
        See <a href="http://www.reed.com/Papers/EndtoEnd.html" target="_blank">End-to-End 
        Arguments in System Design</a> (J.H. Saltzer, D.P. Reed and D.D. Clark. 
        Also see David Isenberg's <a href="http://www.isen.com/stupid.html">Rise 
        of the Stupid Network</a>. <br>
        <a href="#BFN2">2.</a> <a name="FN2"></a>See <a href="http://www.netparadox.com/netparadox.html">The 
        Paradox of the Best Network</a> by Isenberg and Weinberger<br>
        <a href="#FN3">3.</a> <a name="FN3" id="FN3"></a>Doc's interview with 
        <a href="http://www.searls.com/burton_interview.html">Craig Burton</a>.</p>
      <p align="center"><font size="1">Thanks to <a href="mailto:sloankelly@attbi.com">Sloan 
        Kelly</a> for the design tips.</font></p></td>
  </tr>
</tbody></table>
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